Skrillex is great, sometimes. I love finely-crafted dubstep. It's harder to get right than people think. Surely it's easier than playing a violin or something because that's manual not digital manipulation.

I like Skrillex, I like wubs, I like indie, I like speed metal, I like classical, and I like bands like CCR too. I even have a particular persuasion towards Gregorian Chant.

/i'm young too//while most of my generation is not as varied///many of us are

"It found 12-year-olds with strong preferences for hip-hop, heavy metal, gothic and trance music got in trouble at age 12 and at age 16.""Conversely, 12-year-olds who listened to R&B, rock, punk and techno showed no rebellious behaviour at the younger age, but did when they got to age 16."

heh.

Interesting that the researchers -- and the article writer -- felt fit to actually differentiate between the two. You don't normally see that in media.

Of course, it's still not certain what criteria they're using. When they say techno, do they mean actual Detroit techno or everything else that they've been mislabelling as techno for the past 20 years? ....and which genre of trance? The trippy psychedelic goa stuff or the anthemic euro disney cheese stuff?

Of course, the REAL problem with attributing delinquency with music taste is the fact that 12 year olds are about as experienced in music as they are in sex. At age 12 and under, the two most dominant musical influences tend to be family (parents early on, and older siblings later) and media (television/radio). 12 year olds don't really have a standard of comparison to know what they like and don't like so they always sponge off whatever is exposed to them in their limited social spheres (home/school). Pop music is VERY accessible to 12 year olds because it is the most digestible -- it is simple, shallow pap with easily understandable lyrics and sing-a-long melodies. Children cling to it as they would their training wheels when they first learn to ride a bike.

At age 16, a child's music choices broaden thanks to larger/more social circles (high school, sports, activities, parties/dances, etc.) but they are still no better off when they were 12 and most of them haven't developed their own musical identity yet (a lot of teenagers haven't even found themselves much less their favorite music). Pop/Top40 is always the null hypothesis.

The age at which someone is actually mature enough to leave the nest of commercial music and strike out for their own eclectic niches typically starts happening around 17-20. Almost always culminates with leaving home/school to go to college. They discover underground subcultures, experiment with drugs, go to clubs/bars once they reach drinking age, learn about zines and scenes and indie bands, and they become a goth/punk/raver/metalhead/rivethead/hipster/geek/etc... and partake in the musical anthems endemic to those scenes.

So it's not an honest experiment. Too many social factors at work and adolescence is a very volatile period to make any blanket psychological assertions.

It's a surprisingly easy mix of ADD and being heavily anti-scenester. (I don't have the attention span to be bothered with the history of the scene, and I find people, who 'dork to the max' over the finest of magazine-article-fabricated historical nuances of the scene, to be utter bores with very little to add to my already overcrowded train of thought. I enjoy very much indeed parodying that persona at parties, falsely correcting peoples scenester-babble-rants, usually much to the amusement of others, though seldom to the scenester.

You talk with the magazine-educated wordage of the seasoned scenester. I genuinely have the image of you being a scene magazine article writer. For you are the Guardian of Music Historical Fact.

When I play, I avoid guys like you at all costs. All you want to do is talk about monologue on the scene. All I do is write the techbubbleprogtosh that I, me, want to dance to. I occasionally play some in front of other people in exchange for some k, beer and weed. My techbubbleprogtosh has many roots, none of which I actively applied. No deeper layers, just the techbubbleprogtosh that gets brainfarted through my current setup. Some people dance to it. No you can't get a copy. Not yours.

Say what you will, but tell me this isn't a beautiful piece of music. LinkIt's one of Skrillex's song transcribed and played on piano. It gave me pause, and I realize it's not all random sounds thrown together. Do listen to the link.

It's a study from professor at a university in The Netherlands, so I imagine they followed Dutch children. After living in NL for two years, there's something... different about society and music tastes there. I'm not sure what, but what works there in terms of predictive characteristics from music taste, I'm not sure would work in the USA.

If I had to garner a guess, media seemed pretty tightly controlled there. If your taste in music wasn't represented, you would have to go out of your way to find it and it seemed the peers and authorities took notice of it too. Perhaps that indicates the more rebellious nature of the individual? I don't know.

A completely anecdotal example: My Dutch boss was a big fan of 80s pop, especially Michael Jackson. If he found out anyone like things like metal or rap or the like, he'd either ask about it, an almost confrontational manner, or make a remark to others about how "weird" it was. It seems almost like it was setting up for trouble.

I also met some of the die-hardest metal heads there too, they'd travel all summer for the various festivals in Germany and elsewhere.

Hey, man, it's farking hard for teenagers to have rebellious music these days. "Melody" has been used up, as has "rhythm," and that bastard Paul Simon even stole *actual* African music. So they went electronic with the oontz oontz oontz and then now there's 40-year-olds like me enjoying Underworld and The Orb. What is a teenager to do? THERE'S NOTHING FREAKING LEFT!

Or is there? What if we took music and just started throwing in random noise? What if we took a normal electronic track and threw it down three flights of stairs? The old people will HATE IT!!!!

Well now... now we have something going on! It will truly piss off the oldsters. Huzzah!

And here we come to the BIGGEST problem with dubstep (or, what we're really referring to here is brostep): It's not an actual music genre.

It is a music technique, an audio aesthetic more concerned with texture, timbre, resonance and blistering midrange frequencies than actual harmony, melody and rhythm, but it has no native essence by itself. For this reason, it is inherently parasitical. It can only survive by corrupting existing music. Much like a virus, which cannot survive on its own and must propagate by taking over living cells and rewriting their DNA to produce more viruses, dubstep is a fiercely aggressive sound assault that can only exist by invading existing songs and implanting itself as the song's hook (or in dubstep terminology "the drop"), which comes out sounding like the audio equivalent of a cancerous growth. It doesn't improve the song and in most cases usually kills it.

That's what dubstep really is: It is a literal tumor festering on the living organs of electronic music.

There are no original dubstep tracks. All dubstep is a violent invasion and takeover of an already existing pop hit. Dubstep cannot create, it can only corrupt. It is violent, misogynistic, and beloved by Ketamine addicts. It is, in all seriousness, the most offensive form of electronic music that's ever been created. And I listen to farking power noise.

The fact that it attracts legions of douchebag fratboy "bros" to festivals and raves also doesn't help things.

uttertosh:Ishkur: It's like you're knowledgeable and ignorant at the same time.

How on Earth do you do that?

It's a surprisingly easy mix of ADD and being heavily anti-scenester. (I don't have the attention span to be bothered with the history of the scene, and I find people, who 'dork to the max' over the finest of magazine-article-fabricated historical nuances of the scene, to be utter bores with very little to add to my already overcrowded train of thought. I enjoy very much indeed parodying that persona at parties, falsely correcting peoples scenester-babble-rants, usually much to the amusement of others, though seldom to the scenester.

You talk with the magazine-educated wordage of the seasoned scenester. I genuinely have the image of you being a scene magazine article writer. For you are the Guardian of Music Historical Fact.

When I play, I avoid guys like you at all costs. All you want to do is talk about monologue on the scene. All I do is write the techbubbleprogtosh that I, me, want to dance to. I occasionally play some in front of other people in exchange for some k, beer and weed. My techbubbleprogtosh has many roots, none of which I actively applied. No deeper layers, just the techbubbleprogtosh that gets brainfarted through my current setup. Some people dance to it. No you can't get a copy. Not yours.

I like the way you think. Some of the best music I've ever heard is just one guy doing his own thing, for himself.

I thought I made my intent perfectly clear by callin Skrillex the aspergers lovechild of Kraftwerk and Buju freakin Banton, ffs. Got the desired result from Mr. Scene and his Amazingly Dorky Music History Knowledge, though.

/was around when 2step was getting the chicks back into clubs just fine.//has been writing intelligent dance music since before it was described that way.///shameless self unpromoter. No, I won't let you hear any. Not yours.//Glasgows Morphy got me writing on a 303,101,202,606, hr16 when we were both 16./Suck the left one, it's lumpier.

i must be an exception. i've always listened to hard rock and heavy metal. when i was young it was mostly hair metal like bon jovi and warrant, but by the time i left high school i listened to fear factory, marilyn manson, pantera, whatever. these days i've even crossed into death metal but mostly i listen to mainstream metal like lamb of god and machine head.

and i've never been rebellious or a problem for my parents. i graduated high school and college with honors, i've never been arrested, i don't do drugs or even drink alcohol. i can't think of a single argument i've ever had with my parents. i was a polite, well-mannered teenager for the most part.

Ishkur:DO NOT WANT Poster Girl: DP is an old friend from the previous decades for me. When i was nubile and wore a lot of leather I also loved me some harder dance beats like Front 242, Ministry and more techie stuff in the genre of Kraftwerk...guess its my age slipping in.

Know a lot of those too...Skinny Puppy was an obsession of mine for years but there's a few there I missed.

Like I said, music taste all over the place. I have a lot of folk, old time radio, new wave, glam rock, Korean and Japanese pop, metal, etc etc , and you couldn't give me a techno suggestion that I wouldn't give a try.

Alright, well the tricky part is all these acts you listed were doing different music at different points in their careers. Chicane is primarily a trance/pop act but tracks like Saltwater and Offshore -- his biggest hits -- are pure Balearic bliss (which isn't so much a genre as it is a mood). You probably already have those.

Same with Daft Punk. I like to call their Homework era "Chicago House Daft Punk", their Discovery era "New York Garage Daft Punk" and their Human After All era "Detroit Electro Daft Punk"... so it depends whether you stand on the disco loop side of things or the robot rock side of things. And Bill Laswell has been producing music for 30 years. I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific.

Same with Autechre, "some" Orb... IDM/ambient/trance, eh? Hmmm.... I don't know how deep your knowledge of these genres are, so if I go off about some act you already know about, please excuse my condescension. I just want to cover all the bases. I will assume that you have at least a rudimentary level of knowledge so I won't just be obvious and pick everything off Warp Records (I trust you have Richard D. James' Selected Ambient Works already, right?). I'm all about finding hidden and obscure stuff that's often overlooked.

If you don't mind oldskool stuff, and don't mind something interesting and somewhat avant-garde, give Manuel Göttsching - E2-E4 a test spin. It's from the early 80s but incredibly ahead of its time and it inspired a lot of the early Detroit and Ambient guys. That is, if you trust my expertise.

Moving forward, I recommend Boards of Canada, especially Music Has the Right to Children, their seminal 97 analog ambient techno masterpiece. They use genuine oldskool analog synths (like, from the 70s) in their work, to give it a very nostalgia feel. Their follow up, Geogaddi is more IDM than ambient if you like the more abrasive Squarepusher side of things. And their last album, The Campfire Headphase, returns to their ambient techno roots and uses a lot of organic instrumentation especially acoustic guitar. I once listened to one of their tracks, Peacock Tail, nonstop for 7 straight hours at work, just looping it over and over again. It was one of those kind of days.

(if you already know about the Boards disregard everything I just said).

Moving forward into more pure downtempo and ambient, I can not push this guy enough: Solar Fields. This guy has yet to make a bad track so pick any album at random and it's good (but get all of them, really. I especially recommend Movements). Everything he touches is solid gold. He is primarily the reason why forensic montages in crime shows always have that downtempo, faux-IDM background music. It's not his (they actually have an in-house producer to do it), but its a total style-biter.

Do you like the Psy scene at all (no, not the Korean dork.... psychedelic trance...formerly goa)? It's all about Hindu and Middle Eastern sounds and references which you might be into if you like Talvin Singh. The Psy scene has been making some EXCELLENT downtempo the last 10 years, and I won't list the easy ones like Shpongle and go straight to my personal fav: Asura! I recommend 360. Give it a try, and if you like it, get more.

Speedy J - The G Spot. Mostly a techno and acid album, but I like his Fill series for some great ambient goodness.

Banco de Gaia. A legend in the ambient scene. Kind of hit or miss sometimes, I prefer his older stuff, but feel free to explore at your leisure.

I guess that's enough for now. If you don't like any of these or it isn't what you're looking for, come back to me with more info and we'll go further and deeper. We've only scratched the surface here. I also don't want you to take everything I say as gospel. These are all suggestions, but you can use the Discogs Recommendations panel to find other similar sounding artists and labels, and I fully encourage you to do this. Go exploring! Find some buried treasure!! Music isn't about accepting whatever comes down the pipe of whatever station you're on, it's about going off on your own, finding your own heroes, do some research, branch out, search for new moods, new styles and new ideas.

my alma mater. It's gotta have a groove, it's gotta be funky. I think that's one of the things that's so offensive about dubstep -- it's the most flat, uninteresting, unfunky cracker-ass cracker music to ever be sequenced.

I agree with the dull part, but the silver lining will be when the fans discover or create better music. Maybe dub step is like an evolutionary move backwards that allows for a new punctuated jump forward that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Or maybe it'll just fade to be some 60 year olds guilty pleasure in 40 years.

Still hate attractive and successful Caucasian-Americans blasting whatever they heck the blast at 150 decibels. I return the favor by playing ride of the Valkyries through my 120 watt PA system.The elk bugle is also a favorite./get off my pasture

Dubstep came from the UK Garage scene. It's direct antecedent was 2-step. In the early period they called it dark garage..... it had a lot of bass, and yes, a lot of wub (hence the name, though it didn't directly have anything to do with Jamaican dub proper, it's like a step-cousin). It was a rubbery liquid sound that seemed to really find favor with users of disassociatives, especially Ketamine (it makes your legs rubbery, which is perfect for that kind of music).

After about 2006 it started picking up influences (and a lot of influences came from dubstep -- for instance, grime), the most direct influence coming from Ed Bangar-style filthy, glitchy squealing electro house (which was spawned off of early 00s Swedish House), and Tiger Beat Records style Glitch house cf. Kid606 which was ONLY popular because Vice Magazine wrote about it a lot so all their shows kept attracting an unhealthy clientele of hipsters.

Around about 2008, these twin forces -- glitch and electro house -- grabbed dubstep, dragged it behind an alleyway and violently anal raped it no less than 23 times. In the process, Dubstep dropped the bass, jacked up the mid range (primarily because most people's listening devices are earbuds or crappy laptop speakers so what's the point delivering bass they can't hear), kept the wub but applied it to screeching, squelching synth lines and this attracted the unsavory frathouse crowd who were already into the electro stuff anyway....and before long they were calling this mutant offspring "brostep" which is, in no uncertain terms, absolutely hideous. And then Skrillex comes along, harkening the death of dubstep, at least in the underground.

There. Now fark off and stop polluting the threat with your ignorant drivel.

i had no idea you are the same dude that made the music guide.

first off, thank you for introducing me to:

amanda lear - follow methe ones - flawless

i'm a big fan of disco and french house.

whenever i hit up a dubstep room on turntable.fm i always play todd edwards. it typically ends well.

mj cole's remix of "i might be" usually works too. i prefer smooth big bass rather than that abrasive saw bass shiat. looking at you, skrillex.

i could discuss all the nuances for hours, but i should probably sleep soon.

Dubstep came from the UK Garage scene. It's direct antecedent was 2-step. In the early period they called it dark garage..... it had a lot of bass, and yes, a lot of wub (hence the name, though it didn't directly have anything to do with Jamaican dub proper, it's like a step-cousin). It was a rubbery liquid sound that seemed to really find favor with users of disassociatives, especially Ketamine (it makes your legs rubbery, which is perfect for that kind of music).

After about 2006 it started picking up influences (and a lot of influences came from dubstep -- for instance, grime), the most direct influence coming from Ed Bangar-style filthy, glitchy squealing electro house (which was spawned off of early 00s Swedish House), and Tiger Beat Records style Glitch house cf. Kid606 which was ONLY popular because Vice Magazine wrote about it a lot so all their shows kept attracting an unhealthy clientele of hipsters.

Around about 2008, these twin forces -- glitch and electro house -- grabbed dubstep, dragged it behind an alleyway and violently anal raped it no less than 23 times. In the process, Dubstep dropped the bass, jacked up the mid range (primarily because most people's listening devices are earbuds or crappy laptop speakers so what's the point delivering bass they can't hear), kept the wub but applied it to screeching, squelching synth lines and this attracted the unsavory frathouse crowd who were already into the electro stuff anyway....and before long they were calling this mutant offspring "brostep" which is, in no uncertain terms, absolutely hideous. And then Skrillex comes along, harkening the death of dubstep, at least in the underground.

There. Now fark off and stop polluting the threat with your ignorant drivel.

theMightyRegeya:I don't like dubstep, but I'm willing to bet some of the people here dissing it were fans of this:

[images.theage.com.au image 420x279]

I've been cK1'ing to Aphex since the mid 90's. I Think Skrillex is awesome stuff.

No, seriously. They're related by genre, in as much as the Twin's 'genre' is self-defining, spanning styles from acid/breakbeat rave right up to the point where you can audibly trace the evolution of the musicalDNA of dubstep, just by listening. Dubstep, much like it's tougher older brother Techstep, have roots in tecno, D&B, Jungle, rave and acid, but has dancehall reggae and dub chromosomes stitched in there.

drateR:Listening to different beats on your website. I still think it's under the same umbrella, but whatever. Enjoying your site btw.

It is under the same umbrella: Electronic music.

Not techno.

That version of the guide is old and deprecated and full of puerile, juvenile comments. There are a lot of things wrong with it and I've since disowned it. And it doesn't have dubstep -- it was last updated in 2003 (dubstep didn't exist until 2005).

I'm in the process of making a new one. It's going to be ten times larger. If you (or anyone else) is interested in wanting to know when it will be released, I've recently set up a Twitter changelog for the new guide. It will chronicle the development cycle and other such things.

TheHumanCannonball:After living in NL for two years, there's something... different about society and music tastes there. I'm not sure what, but what works there in terms of predictive characteristics from music taste, I'm not sure would work in the USA.

This. The Netherlands has a reputation in the US as being easy going and liberal, based solely on their tolerance of private drug use and prostitution. But they're actually extremely conservative in a lot of odd ways. They just have a different way of being conservative.

/like boiling food until it turns to mush//and being polite to their elders, at least the years I was there

drateR:I kinda think all are under the umbrella of "techno", but I'm old.

That would be wrong. Techno is one thing. Trance is another thing. Dubstep is another thing. They're three entirely different things and about the only thing in common between them is that they're all made electronically (sequences and synthesizers n such).

When I was 12, circa 1986, a friend gave me two TDK D-90 cassette tapes that he "taped off his brother's record player." One contained the entirety of Pink Floyd's "The Wall." The other had Rush "Moving Pictures" on side one and Iron Maiden "Number of the Beast" on side two.

I like to think that it was the greatest gift an almost-teen boy in 1986 could possibly have received, except maybe having puberty suddenly grow his dong to epic proportions.

Dedmon:Say what you will, but tell me this isn't a beautiful piece of music. LinkIt's one of Skrillex's song transcribed and played on piano. It gave me pause, and I realize it's not all random sounds thrown together. Do listen to the link.

He's got some great parts and pieces, he just puts them together in a really sloppy way. High energy, but low craft. Although I just described Nirvana, and when I was 14-ish that was what I listened to. So I'm officially Just Too Old for Skrillex.

Teach that guy some music theory, and he'd really be something. Give him a few years/ albums and we'll see.

HotWingAgenda:When I was in high school, the people that listened to the loudest, most obnoxious and rebellious music were the metalheads and goths. And they were all extremely quiet and polite when not at concerts.

All the adults I know that listen to metal are super mild-mannered with successful careers and families.

Goths are usually polite and quiet (though not extremely) even at concerts these days. The ones who are obnoxious and loud are part of those fun subgenres of Goth like Cybergoth (happy go lucky people who demand the DJ plays "happier music", wears tubes in their hair, lots of neon colors, probably is on a drug or two, and listens to slightly "darker" versions of techno music; makes me in awe how that part of the scene mainly took over alot of the clubs and the subculture still survives despite of them).

When I was in high school, the people that listened to the loudest, most obnoxious and rebellious music were the metalheads and goths. And they were all extremely quiet and polite when not at concerts.

All the adults I know that listen to metal are super mild-mannered with successful careers and families.

SubbyScientists from the Department of Obvious find that loud, obnoxious, rebellious music is preferred by loud, obnoxious, rebellious teenagers. Skrillex immediately returns to studio to produce another "album"

Well, come on mothers throughout the land,Pack your boys off to Vietnam.Come on fathers, don't hesitate,Send 'em off before it's too late.Be the first one on your blockTo have your boy come home in a box.